let’s have a 100% sales tax on the sale of movie tickets, CDs, videos and all other entertainment. These are purely luxury items and will not affect the ability of the poor to live. Movies tickets, CD rentals and DVD sales alone should raise $30 billion.

And:

We should investigate the accounting practices of the movie industry. There is something seriously wrong with an industry that claims that Forrest Gump never made a profit. We don’t know how badly this industry has cheated the IRS, but let’s assume that $30 billion is a lowball number.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Obama Likes Fiscal Cliff

For reasons that escape me, most people on Capitol Hill and members of the brain dead "Press Corpse uh Corps" seem to believe that Obama really wants a compromise to avoid going over the so-called “Fiscal Cliff.” The assumption is that Obama wants to raise taxes only on those making over $250,000 annually and would like to have something done about those sequestration laws.

Talk about living in a fantasy universe.

The “Fiscal Cliff” is tailor made for Obama. Keep in mind that the law which implements this tax hike and sequestration was recommended by a member of Obama’s administration.

So what will happen if the law is not changed?

• Tax rates will go back to the rates we had in 2001.

• Spending will be “cut” by $1 trillion over 10 years.

Let’s look at these results one at a time: raising taxes. First, I agree that raising taxes is not sound policy in an anemic economy and could bring on another recession in 2013. From Obama’s perspective higher tax rates will increase revenue to the treasury, allowing him to spend more. If it leads to a recession in 2013, so what? It isn't going to affect him.

Keep in mind that he's an incredibly lucky community organizer who ended up in his dream job. He’s got his job, his Air Force One, a large free house where he can host extravagant parties using his personal servants, taxpayer-paid vacations to luxury resorts for another 4 years, a very handsome pension and the ability to become ultra-wealthy the same way the Clintons did it after leaving the White House.

He's term-limited out so a bad economy doesn’t worry him from an electoral standpoint. In fact, a bad economy, higher unemployment and the economic ills that accompany it are is tailor made for a President who wants to increase government control over people. With millions more unemployed there are great opportunities for even longer unemployment benefits, more free cell phones, more food stamps, more people claiming social security disability benefits, even a broader version of ObamaCare. The press corps is not going to make him uncomfortable by asking pesky questions about his part in a stagnant economy; they’ll dutifully blame the Republicans.

Tell me again why he would not want to go with that.

Second, about that “spending cut.” Government is the only entity that argues with a straight face that spending more is spending less. If they planned to increase spending by a trillion dollars and they actually spend a trillion dollars minus a penny, that’s the government definition of a “drastic” spending cut. But if government spending is kept at roughly current levels, a “trillion dollar cut” over 10 years is actually a reduction of one hundred billion dollars a year. At one time that was a lot of money. Since the beginning of the Obama spending spree that’s a rounding error. If the Obama government saw one hundred billion dollars lying in the street, they would pass it by like you would pass a dirty penny.

But here’s the reason that Obama doesn’t mind the sequester: it falls largely on the military and Barack Obama wants to cut the military back. He believes that America is the cause of much of the world’s problems and most of that is attributed to America’s powerful military. So the sequester for him is a win-win. He gets to gut the military and blame the Republicans at the same time. How cool is that!

You can be confident that congress will not stand in the way of additional spending on social programs if the recession hits. They have to run for re-election. And if it doesn’t hit you can be sure that Obama will find any number of excuses to demand more for “his” people.

What I find incredibly frustrating is the picture of Republican congressional leaders trying to shift the blame for the fiscal cliff to Obama by complaining about his lack of leadership on the issue. First of all, it’s a stupid tactic because it elevates him to the position of the indispensable man. Why they would want to do that is beyond me. Second, they make it appear as if Obama actually wants a solution to the fiscal cliff when he’s perfectly fine with the solution he has now. They should have been accusing Obama of wanting to go over the fiscal cliff for months. That, at least, would have been the truth and would have gotten a different response from the Democrats and perhaps even Team Obama.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

The vaunted British health system, the one lauded by the American Liberal establsihment and the one that ObamaCare is aiming to duplicate:

The largest and most detailed survey into hospital deaths has revealed that almost 12,000 patients are needlessly dying every year as a result of poor patient care.

The researchers from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine based the study on 1,000 deaths at 10 NHS trusts during 2009. The study revealed that basic errors were made in more than one in 10 cases, leading to 5.2% of deaths, which was the equivalent of nearly 12,000 preventable deaths in hospitals in England every year.

The research published in the British Medical Journal's Quality and Safety publication found that errors occurred when hospital staff made an incorrect diagnosis, prescribed the wrong drugs, failed to monitor a patient's condition or react when a patient deteriorated. Errors in omission were more frequent than active mistakes.

It seems that schoolworkers want guns and gun training.

Watching the news and reading the paper and you are barraged with endless quotes from the public, teachers and teacher union officials united that guns will not penetrate the sacred halls of academia. They are, after all, "gun free zones" in which only a deranged killer can carry a gun. And that's the way it should be according to the press. Yet given the choice, and not much noted in the press (except to mock), teachers are lining up for gun training so that they will not end up as soft, ineffective shields between their children and the next nut who has a grudge against his classmates or his mother.

More than 450 teachers and other school employees from across Ohio have applied for 24 spots in a free firearms-training program being offered by the Buckeye Firearms Association.

“We’re pleasantly surprised, but it’s not shocking,” Ken Hanson, legal chairman for the association, said yesterday of the response since the group began taking applications on its website 10 days ago. “The demand has been there for quite some time.”

More than 150 Utah teachers and school workers took time off from their winter breaks Thursday to attend a free class on how to carry concealed weapons and respond to mass violence such as the recent shooting in a Connecticut elementary school.

It’s a course that’s been offered to Utah educators for more than a decade, but Thursday it attracted about 10 times as many people as usual, said Clark Aposhian, an instructor with Fairwarning Training and a chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, which hosted the class with OPSGEAR. Aposhian said organizers had to turn away about 40 or 50 people for lack of space.

The student's attack began with a shotgun blast through the windows of a California high school. Rich Agundez, the El Cajon policeman assigned to the school, felt his mind shift into overdrive.

People yelled at him amid the chaos but he didn't hear. He experienced "a tunnel vision of concentration."

While two teachers and three students were injured when the glass shattered in the 2001 attack on Granite Hills High School, Agundez confronted the assailant and wounded him before he could get inside the school and use his second weapon, a handgun.

In the rest of the country:

—Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he has the authority to mobilize private citizens to fight crime and plans to post armed private posse members around the perimeter of schools. He said he hasn't spoken to specific school districts and doesn't plan to have the citizen posse members inside the buildings.

—The Snohomish School District north of Seattle got rid of its school officers because of the expense.

—The Las Vegas-based Clark County School District has its own police department and places armed officers in and around its 49 high school campuses. Officers patrol outside elementary and middle schools. The Washoe County School District in Nevada also has a police force, but it was only about a decade ago that the officers were authorized to carry guns on campus.

—In Milwaukee, a dozen city police officers cover the school district but spend most of their time in seven of the 25 high schools. In Madison, Wis., an armed police officer has worked in each of the district's four high schools since the mid-1990s.

—For the last five years, an armed police officer has worked in each of the two high schools and three middle schools in Champaign, Ill. Board of Education member Kristine Chalifoux said there are no plans to increase security, adding, "I don't want our country to become an armed police state."

Ed Massey, vice chairman of the Boone County, Ky., school board and president of the National School Boards Association, said his district has nine trained law enforcement officers for 23 schools and "would love to have one in every school."

"They bring a sense of security and have done tremendous work in deterring problems in school," he said. "The number of expulsions have dramatically decreased. We used to have 15 or 20 a year. Now we have one or two in the last three years."

An officer, he said, "is not just a hired gun. They have an office in the school. They are trained in crisis management, handling mass casualties and medical emergencies."

It seems that Big Media may be out of step with the public. Of course that's not news.

Measures that would bring more police officers into schools and allow teachers to be armed appear to be gaining momentum among Tennessee lawmakers in the wake of last month’s shooting in Newtown, Conn.

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, the bright lights at Gannet’s The Journal News decided it was high time to criminalize ordinary, law-abiding gun owners in the area.

Under the guise of providing “public information,” the Journal News’ editorial hit squad, led by publisher/hitwoman Janet Hasson, created an interactive digital map on their lohud.com website showing the exact address of every pistol permit holder in Rockland and Westchester County.

Theorists of literary modernism rarely go beyond token references to Christianity in their attempts at definition. So too in criticism, where the specifics of an artist's encounter with the dominant faith of the culture often dissolve into lazy and shrugging references to "secularization," "the death of God," and "the revolt against traditional religion." A new research project at the University of Bergen, Norway, called Modernism and Christianity: Literature, History, Archive (2011-2014) aims to retrieve Christianity from this subterranean, supposedly fossil existence within Modernism studies. Archival research is essential to this task because it enables us to uncover how a range of Christian influences were part and parcel of the intellectual world and creative process of modernist writers.

Modern Liberals, like Victorian maidens averting their eyes from uncloither limbs, look th eother way from the Christianity that's in the very air they breathe.

Shut up, they explained.

What can be done to reduce the incidence of violence and the death toll the next time some deranged individual decides to kill as many people as he can? That’s the question that rational people ask following the killing at Sandy Hook. The media are in agreement that having an armed guard in every school is not the answer. What they can’t seem to agree on is the alternative.

Wayne LaPierre’s position, representing the NRA, is simple and easy to understand. The media’s recommendations are either ineffective (limit the size of gun magazines, ban scary looking weapons or stop the sale of guns) or so vague as to be meaningless.

David Gregory focused on the size of magazines. He held up a magazine capable of holding 30 cartridges – thereby breaking the law in the District of Columbia – and asked LaPierre if limiting the size of the magazine would reduce the carnage. The answer is no. The killer in Sandy Hook had 20 minutes before police arrived. Changing a magazine in a gun takes literally one or two seconds and the kid had many magazines with him, already loaded. The killers at Columbine had an hour before committing suicide and two hours before a SWAT team actually entered the school.

The focus on the weapons used is a distraction. The Columbine killers initially wanted to murder their fellow students using bombs. When their bombs failed to work, they used shotguns, a rifle and 13, 10 round magazines (of which David Gregory approves) and pistols. There is some confusion about the weapons that the Sandy Hook killer used. NBC reported that 4 handguns were used in the school shooting and that the rifle that was blamed was left in his car. Reuters tells us that a rifle was used. There have been so many conflicting and erroneous reports on this crime that I find it hard to determine who a credible source is and who is not.

The press has now stopped reporting on the story. Instead the dead children are now a tool, a platform from which the media barons are trying to achieve some long held goals.

The Virginian Pilot’s editorial position is perhaps as good an indication of this as any. After spending most of the editorial blasting the NRA, the editors admit that many schools already have armed guards. But they dismiss the possibility that these guards could actually stop a shooter, relegating them to

“work[ing] with students to learn about bullying, drugs, potential violence and more.”

And if that “more” is not to stop the next school shooting, why not disarm the police in those schools? Their contribution to the debate is to call their political opponents “irrational,” “sad,” “nonsensical.” But no. that’s not their entire contribution. Here’s their answer:

“The rational response - the one that has taken our nation far, far too long to focus on - is to build a comprehensive approach that includes heavy investments in mental health care and curbs on the sale and production of weapons capable of slaughtering school resource officers as easily as children.”

That sounds so rational that after reading that you’re not supposed to ask: what does that mean? “Heavy investment” means lots of spending. “Mental health care” is not a bad thing, but exactly how and by what mechanism would that have prevented any of the shooting that you can think of? Are we going to have the cops round up the “Goths” who shot up Columbine, or the painfully shy kid that shot up Sandy Hook, or the guy that shot up the movie theater showing Batman before he committed his crime and put them in a mental institution? Tell me, editors, exactly what you have in mind for the person who looks a little weird or acts a little weird but hasn’t committed a crime? Or perhaps they are advocating mandatory psychological indoctrination in schools. In other cultures that was once referred to as brainwashing; in the brave new world of the editors perhaps we could refer to it as mental cleansing. USA: land of the homogeneous mentally pure, but remember to celebrate diversity!

Of course the part about spending on mental health is the obligatory acknowledgement that American culture, almost totally dominated by Liberals, has desensitized many of our young people to all kinds of psychological and physical violence. Our culture teaches our young to objectify each other as sexual objects via print, movies and music. It produces movies that show ever-more realistic depiction of slaughter and makes heroes of the most violent. That culture produces games that teach our young to kill with skill and speed. And those that protest against that are ridiculed as blue nosed, moronic, bigots and Bible thumpers who want to impose their morality on others. The editors’ answer to that is not less cultural pollution but “mental health care.”

But when it comes to guns, it’s ban, baby, ban.

The Left has a simple goal, disarm the civilian populace.

They don’t really have a problem with guns. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and media mogul Rupert Murdoch – both extreme advocates of disarming the populace - are literally surrounded by armed guards. Barack Obama’s guards have the firepower to take over a medium sized third world country. Police forces have become militarized to an astounding extent employing heavy automatic weapons and armored vehicles. An amazing array of weaponry is used by the military including the widespread use of drones to kill from the sky.

It’s the people they don’t trust with guns. In fact the Left has the same attitude toward the people they refer to as “the masses” as medieval lords had toward the peasantry; peasants with weapons could storm the castle. It’s what many social programs reflect. Too old to work? Social security to keep you alive in poverty. Food stamps to feed you. Public housing to store you. ObamaCare to keep you healthy and send you off when you start costing too much.

The editors end the way these “conversations” usually do:

“If LaPierre and the NRA truly want to make meaningful contributions, they should have the grace, decency and good sense to get out of the way. They've dominated the debate over gun violence for decades. And they've failed.”

Friday, December 28, 2012

The Diplomad 2.0 reminds us that dead kids are always and everywhere a prop for the left to advance their agenda. The people of Sandy Hook are begin exploited to promote disarming the american people. Before that the Obama Administration was busy "proving" that American guns were arming the Mexican drug cartels.

I have learned from the left over the past decades is that it's the ends that count. Everything and everyone is merely a prop for some political objective. Poor Bolivian Indians . . . great, an opportunity to bash international corporations, capitalism, and the USA. Dead white kids in a school . . . great, an opportunity to undermine the second amendment and that hideously embarrassing Red Neck "gun culture." Dead black or hispanic kids on the streets of Chicago and LA . . . great, an opportunity to blame it on gun owners in Virginia and Florida. Need to "prove" American gun stores supply the cartels? No problem, set up a government program to ship thousands of guns to Mexican criminals and watch the body count rise! Those Mexican kids are being murdered for a good cause!

The map indicates the addresses of all Journal News Employees in the New York Tri-State area. Each dot represents an individual Journal News employee -- a reporter, editor or staffer. The data does not include freelancers — reporters or photographers — which can be hired without being an employee. Being included in this map does not mean the individual at a specific location is a responsible reporter or editor, just that they are a reporter or editor.

Data for all categories is included, but certain information is not available on an individual basis.

To create the map, Talk of the Sound submitted Google searches for the names and addresses of all Journal News employees in the New York Tri-State area. By state law, the information is public record.

Newspapers are beginning to list the names and addresses of people with gun permits. Turn about is fair play given that the press is responsible for more misery and death than guns. I think I will be compiling a map of Virginian Pilot employees since they have shown an obsessive interest in me.

Out of 760 dogs impounded, they killed 713, arranged for 19 to be adopted, and farmed out 36 to other shelters (not necessarily "no kill" ones). As for cats, they impounded 1,211, euthanized 1,198, transferred eight, and found homes for a grand total of five. PETA also took in 58 other companion animals -- including rabbits. It killed 54 of them.

PETA's headquarters is in Norfolk, VA. The survival rate for dogs given in care to PETA is 2.5% and for cats, it's 0.4%. The represent the Culture of Death.

This man needs to be "perp walked." The arrest should be made while he is on the air. He should be handcuffed and escorted out of the studio into a waiting gaggle of reporters with cameras who have been alerted by the police for the occasion. His makeup man should not be allowed to accompany him.

In his eulogy for Sen. Daniel Inouye, President Obama spoke in some detail about his favorite subject — himself. In doing so Obama claimed that “Danny Inouye was perhaps my earliest political inspiration.”

No matter what the occasion, and no matter who is supposed to be the subject of praise, for Barack Obama the topic is always the same — Barack Obama. And when he discusses this topic, the truth is usually beside the point.

Moving right along in America's gun control, er, "conversation," we now have the illuminating debate over the alleged criminality of "Meet the Press" host David Gregory. Somehow this seems appropriate to the quality of the rest of the gun debate.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Washington, D.C. police are investigating the notorious NBC News crime boss for using an unlawful rifle magazine as a prop for his Sunday program. The Post says Mr. Gregory had asked police for permission to acquire the 30-round rifle magazine, which is banned under D.C. law, but police refused. Mr. Gregory displayed the ammo anyway during his interview with Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association.

This has created an uproar, with gun rights advocates calling for Mr. Gregory's indictment, if not yet the death penalty, and police acknowledging their probe.

How perfect can you get? Mr. Gregory interrogates Mr. LaPierre on the subject of whether to ban a magazine that it is illegal for Mr. Gregory to display but apparently easy enough to acquire in time for a Sunday morning broadcast. So here we have a possible indictment that would be entirely nonsensical of a journalist who was trying to embarrass an NRA official over an ammunition ban whose impact would be entirely symbolic.

We think that it's more than a little bizarre that under the law, David Gregory (and possibly members of the NBC News department who obtained the high capacity magazine for him) should be arrested, indicted and convicted of a felony which was deliberately committed in broad daylight and broadcast to millions of homes. But that is the law, and the law should be no respecter of persons. If it is illegal for Joe Lunchbucket to possess such an item in Washington DC it is equally illegal for a member of the ruling class like David Gregory to possess it.

Perhaps this is the time to state that the law is a dead letter and should not be enforced for anyone or even repealed. David Gregory may have made a valuable contribution to the debate about guns and gun control. We can only hope.

The Journal-News recently printed the names and addresses of people with gun permits in several sections of New York. It did not sit well with some others who decided to publish information on the names, addresses and phone numbers of people associated with the Journal News and its parent company.

I'm not sure that it penetrates yet to people in the newspaper business that publishing is no longer a one way activity. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, the victims of newspaper malfeasance can respond.

For the names, addresses and even pictures of the home of the reporter go here.

I read somewhere that there is a law against this. Can anyone help me determine if that's the case?

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

If you don’t want to have a gun in your home or in your school, that’s your choice. But don’t be such a damn fool as to advertise to the whole world that you are in “a gun-free environment” where you are a helpless target for any homicidal fiend who is armed. Is it worth a human life to be a politically correct moral exhibitionist?

When Twenty Minutes Is Forever. According to the CNN timeline for the Sandy Hook tragedy, "Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls." Twenty minutes. Five minutes is forever when violence is underway, but 20 minutes -- a third of an hour -- means that the "first responders" aren't likely to do much more than clean up the mess.

This has led to calls -- in Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, St. Louis -- for armed officers or staff at schools. Some object. But we have people with guns protecting airports, hospitals and politicians. And leading anti-gun crusaders like New York's billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg and press lord Rupert Murdoch are protected by armed security teams that could probably topple some third-world governments. Why are our children less worthy of protection?

Monday, December 24, 2012

The Extremes Hitler Wanted to Go To in Order to Replace Christianity with the "Religion" of National Socialism

An interesting essay in No Parasan. Hitler's persecution of the Jews is well know but the Left has tried to portray the nazis and Hitler Christians, which they was definitely not. Hitler wanted to replace Christianity with the worship of the State. In this he has much in common with the Left.

Here is the Nazi translation of Silent Night:

The accepted English translation of Mohr’s “Silent Night,” stanza three lines two and three is: “The Son of God loves pure light, radiant beams from thy Holy faith.” Equivalent lines in the Nazified version are “German blood, O how laugh the lips of thy children, blessed with joy.”

Gregory Mocks LaPierre for Proposing Armed Guards, but Sends Kids to High-Security School

Via the Weekly Standard

David Gregory mocked the NRA's Wayne LaPierre for proposing that armed guards be at every school in America. But the NBC host seems to have no problem with armed guards protecting his kids everyday where they attend school in Washington, D.C."You proposed armed guards in school. We'll talk about that in some detail in a moment. You confronted the news media. You blamed Hollywood and the gaming industry. But never once did you concede that guns could actually be part of the problem. Is that a meaningful contribution, Mr. LaPierre, or a dodge?," asked Gregory.Later the host suggested that guns don't prevent violence in schools (he cited the mass shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech). "But you would concede that, as good as an idea as you think this is, it may not work. Because there have been cases where armed guards have not prevented this kind of massacre, this kind of carnage. I want you would concede that point, wouldn't you?," Gregory pleaded.The NBC host would go on the rest of the segment to suggest that armed guards might not be effective in preventing mass murders at school. Which is perhaps an interesting theoretical argument.But when it comes to Gregory's own kids, however, they are secured every school day by armed guards.The Gregory children go to school with the children of President Barack Obama, according to the Washington Post. That school is the co-ed Quaker school Sidwell Friends.According to a scan of the school's online faculty-staff directory, Sidwell has a security department made up of at least 11 people. Many of those are police officers, who are presumably armed.Moreover, with the Obama kids in attendance, there is a secret service presence at the institution, as well. It's safe to say the school where Gregory sends his kids is a high-security school. It's just odd he'd want it for his kids, but wouldn't be more open to it for others.

Why does the Virginian Pilot want children to die?

He headline is rhetorical of course.The editors of the Virginian Pilot don’t
really want to see little children get slaughtered.The fact is that while mass murder gets 24/7
news coverage, it’s occurrence is so rare that there is a better chance of being
hit by lightning than being murdered by a crazed killer on a spree as happened in
Connecticut recently.

Of course the incidence of violence directed at the
President is enough to surround him by dozens of armed guards and armored
limousines.Despite what Leftists say
about guns, if they are rich or powerful enough they surround themselves with
big men with lots of guns.

So why does the Virginian Pilot make recommendations that
will have no real effect on some copycat wishing to replicate Adam Lanza? Probably because they see no real threat but
are taking this opportunity to lobby for gun control.

Today’s Virginian Pilot has an editorial about its answer to
the murder of the little children and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut.None of its recommendations, not a single
one, would have stopped the slaughter.For your edification, here is the Virginian Pilot’s wish list:

·Congress must close the "gun show
loophole" and require universal background checks.

oAdam Lanza, the killer in Newtown did not buy
the guns he used so he would not have been stopped with a background
check.Neither did he obtain the guns at
a gun show.The guns he used were his
mother’s.There is every reason to believe
that his mother who actually bought and owned the guns met Connecticut’s very
strict gun control laws.If not, that information
would have come forward by now.

·Stop the sale of “assault weapons” which high
capacity magazines.

oThe term “assault weapon” is used by the ignorant
fools in the press to describe any gun that looks like a gun used in one of the
many shoot-them-up movies or video games.The same movies that inspired quite a number of murders. Ending the sale of “scary looking” guns with
large magazines would not have done anything to stop Adam Lanza since they
already exist in large quantities.

·Buy back programs.

oThis is another example of the Virginian Pilot’s
desire to never let a crisis go to waste.In this case throwing all of their pet gun projects into the mix while
people are still in shock from the gruesomeness of the crime.The fact is that scientists are unable to
find any reduction of crime or violence as a result of gun buyback programs.But they make people who don’t know much
about science feel good about themselves.A gun buy-back program would not have stopped Adam Lanza.His mother, who actually owned the guns
wanted them.

·Re-criminalize possession of new magazines with
more than 10 bullets.

oNote the adjective “new.”Adam Lanza used an existing gun with an
existing magazine.Millions of these
exist now.The passage of a law today means
that we have at least a 100 year supply.Adam Lanza would have no trouble under the Virginian Pilot’s regime to
go out, get one of the millions of “scary looking guns” with large capacity
magazines andkill again.All he had to do is go to his mother’s gun safe.

·Devote more funding to identifying and treating
people with mental illness.

oThis could possibly have had some effect, if we
did not live in a country where the ACLU would prevent the only effective way
of handling Adam Lanza.First you have
to find him and subject him to involuntary institutionalization.I wonder how the Virginian Pilot would like
that?There is a story out there that
the thing that set Adam Lanza off was his mother’s desire to have her son
declared mentally ill and treated.So it
seems as of the Virginian Pilot’s recommendation may actually cause a few more
Adam Lanza’s to go on a killing spree.

In the same issue of the Virginian Pilot, they have an editorial
cartoon that makes fun of Governor McDonnell’s interest in considering the use
of guards or police in schools.We are
told by no less an authority as the New York Times that about one-third of our
schools already have police or armed guard protection in the building, so why does
the Virginian Pilot advocate actions that would not have stopped Adam Lanza and
ridicule something that may have stopped him before he killed 26 helpless,
unarmed people?I will not try to
psychoanalyze the Virginian Pilot’s motives, but it appears that an anti-gun
philosophy does not allow them to accept the fact that the best defense against
a crazed killer is a good guy with a gun.

It also means that if the Virginian Pilot’s objectives are
achieved, it will only be a matter of time before another “gun-free zone” will
be the venue of another slaughter.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

One of the main topics on which you’ve been posting lately is near and dear to me professionally, as I am a resident in the field of psychiatry. Suffice it to say that I’m one of the few people I encounter in my professional life who really think the old system of state hospitals, with their vastly greater number of long-term-committed patients than what we see today, was a good idea. It should come as no surprise that liberals blame deinstitutionalization, not on the liberal belief in equal freedom and individual autonomy as the highest principles, but on those mean old money-grubbing conservatives and their budget-cutting, social-services-slashing ways. It’s a perfect illustration of one of the variations of Auster’s First Law you’ve no doubt stated somewhere: the more liberal our society becomes, the more its problems caused by liberalism are blamed on society’s remaining conservatism.

Read the whole thing. Also the part about the Liberals' never-ending demand for a "conversation." It's a euphemism for "shut up and do what I want."

(b) No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. For the purposes of this subsection, the term large capacity ammunition feeding device means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The term large capacity ammunition feeding device shall not include an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition..”

"No person shall possess ..." Looks like David Gregory and the staff of Meet the Press have broken the law. But laws are for the little people.

Walter Russell Mead finds hope that government worker pensions can be reformed and stave of municipal bankruptcies.

A new proposal on state pensions from the Kansas Chamber of Commerce offers a clue: the proposal would substitute defined contribution plans for the current defined benefit plan that goes to state retirees.

Something like this needs to be phased in so that people who are in retirement or have worked all their lives in the expectation of a pension are not financially destroyed. But gradually the municipalities and states have to realize what private industry has known for a while: retiree benefits can destroy a company. General Motors is exhibit "A"

In one case he has taken up, an 18-year-old girl from a provincial village was arrested for blasphemy after a row with her mother and brother, who had discovered she had met a boyfriend after going away to university.

It was the girl who had complained to the police first, alleging that her mother and brother had beaten her, but when questioned, the mother claimed the girl had cursed her and cursed her religion. That was enough for the police to switch the focus of their attention.

This is going to be fixed in Egypt the way the Left is fixing gun violence in the US. The new regime in Egypt will forbid women from attending university. No university, no boyfriend. Problem solved.

Why do you have to read the foreign press to get this kind of reporting? Oh, who am I kidding, Obama is President and according to the MSM his foreign policy is has solved the problems of the Middle East, except for that pesky Israel; a problem that will soon be solved by the Iranian bomb.

Friday, December 21, 2012

The National Rifle Association’s 4 million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters join the nation in horror, outrage, grief and earnest prayer for the families of Newtown, Connecticut … who suffered such incomprehensible loss as a result of this unspeakable crime.

Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

Now, we must speak … for the safety of our nation’s children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one — nobody — has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases braggingabout them. They post signs advertising them.

And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are theirsafest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.

How have our nation’s priorities gotten so far out of order? Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses — even sports stadiums — are all protected by armed security.

We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers.

Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day. And does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school he’s already identified at this very moment?

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine thatrewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to try to make their mark?

A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

And the fact is, that wouldn’t even begin to address the much larger and more lethal criminal class: Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40% — to the lowest levels in a decade.

So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years! Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.

And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.

Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?

Then there’s the blood-soaked slasher films like “American Psycho” and “Natural Born Killers” that are aired like propaganda loops on “Splatterdays” and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it “entertainment.”

But is that what it really is? Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.

A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18.

And throughout it all, too many in our national media … their corporate owners … and their stockholders … act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators. Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws and fill the national debate with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away.

The media call semi-automatic firearms “machine guns” — they claim these civilian semi-automatic firearms are used by the military, and they tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers … when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don’t know what they’re talking about!

Worse, they perpetuate the dangerous notion that one more gun ban — or one more law imposed on peaceful, lawful people — will protect us where 20,000 others have failed!

As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it.

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away … or a minute away?

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow morning: “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the NRA’s answer to everything!” Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word “gun” automatically become a bad word?

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn’t a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn’t a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won’t be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in their schools?

They’re our kids. They’re our responsibility. And it’s not just our duty to protect them — it’s our right to protect them.

You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?

Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America’s gun owners that you’re willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one — regardless of personal political prejudice — has the right to impose that sacrifice.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year’s budget, and scrapped “Secure Our Schools”policing grants in next year’s budget.

With all the foreign aid, with all the money in the federal budget, we can’t afford to put a police officer in every school?Even if they did that, politicians have no business — and no authority — denying us the right, the ability, or the moral imperative to protect ourselves and our loved ones from harm.

Now, the National Rifle Association knows that there are millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters and rescue personnel; and an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every school. We can deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer — relying on the brave men and women of America’s police force.

The budget of our local police departments are strained and resources are limited, but their dedication and courage are second to none and they can be deployed right now.

I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work — and by that I mean armed security.

Right now, today, every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers and local authorities — and draw upon every resource available — to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now. Every school will have a different solution based on its own unique situation.

Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place right now. And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.

Our training programs are the most advanced in the world. That expertise must be brought to bear to protect our schools and our children now. We did it for the nation’s defense industries and military installations during World War II, and we’ll do it for our schools today.

The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multi-faceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields.

Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson will lead this effort as National Director of the National School Shield Program, with a budget provided by the NRA of whatever scope the task requires. His experience as a U.S. Attorney, Director of the Drug Enforcement Agency and Undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security will give him the knowledge and expertise to hire the most knowledgeable and credentialed experts available anywhere, to get this program up and running from the first day forward.

If we truly cherish our kids more than our money or our celebrities, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible and the security that is only available with a properly trained — armed — good guy.

Under Asa’s leadership, our team of security experts will make this the best program in the world for protecting our children at school, and we will make that program available to every school in America free of charge.

That’s a plan of action that can, and will, make a real, positive and indisputable difference in the safety of our children — starting right now.

There’ll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, this is the day for decisive action.

We can’t wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act. We can’t lose precious time debating legislation that won’t work. We mustn’t allow politics or personal prejudice to divide us. We must act now.

For the sake of the safety of every child in America, I call on every parent, every teacher, every school administrator and every law enforcement officer in this country to join us in the National School Shield Program and protect our children with the only line of positive defense that’s tested and proven to work.

For decades I have been trying to come up with an ideal way to slice a banana. "Use a knife!" they say. Well...my parole officer won't allow me to be around knives. "Shoot it with a gun!" Background check...HELLO! I had to resort to carefully attempt to slice those bananas with my bare hands. 99.9% of the time, I would get so frustrated that I just ended up squishing the fruit in my hands and throwing it against the wall in anger. Then, after a fit of banana-induced rage, my parole officer introduced me to this kitchen marvel and my life was changed. No longer consumed by seething anger and animosity towards thick-skinned yellow fruit, I was able to concentrate on my love of theatre and am writing a musical play about two lovers from rival gangs that just try to make it in the world. I think I'll call it South Side Story.Banana slicer...thanks to you, I see greatness on the horizon.

And the second review.

What can I say about the 571B Banana Slicer that hasn't already been said about the wheel, penicillin, or the iPhone.... this is one of the greatest inventions of all time. My husband and I would argue constantly over who had to cut the day's banana slices. It's one of those chores NO ONE wants to do! You know, the old "I spent the entire day rearing OUR children, maybe YOU can pitch in a little and cut these bananas?" and of course, "You think I have the energy to slave over your damn bananas? I worked a 12 hour shift just to come home to THIS?!" These are the things that can destroy an entire relationship. It got to the point where our children could sense the tension. The minute I heard our 6-year-old girl in her bedroom, re-enacting our daily banana fight with her Barbie dolls, I knew we had to make a change. That's when I found the 571B Banana Slicer. Our marriage has never been healthier, AND we've even incorporated it into our lovemaking. THANKS 571B BANANA SLICER!

Popehat has in interesting discussion on the Loomis affair. The comments, in which I participate, are worth reading. It's worth stating that there is a case to be made for the freedom of academics to take unpopular views. In Loomis' case it becomes a matter of defending the right of academics to be outrageous assholes without consequences.

Of course no mention of the Loomis rant would be complete without The Other McCain and Candyass Blogger.

When I said that the mentally ill should be in institutions, public universities weren’t the kind of institutions I had in mind.Leaving aside whatever personal psychiatric issues may afflict The Ranting Professor — and if a nut like Loomis can legally buy a gun, maybe we do need new laws

The defenders of Loomis insist that their principles are supreme.

So the operative principle is clear: (A) it would be a crime against human liberty for Erik Loomis to be denied tenure at the University of Rhode Island merely because he’s a demented kook, and (B) no fair trying to talk back to Commissar Farley and the LG&M politburo.

The DiploMad gives the back of his hand to Obama in his discussion of the shootings.

Obama. OK, to my chagrin, he's President, and modern Presidents see themselves as consolers, grief counselors, and dispensers of teary hokum. But this one, really? This one talking about gun violence? This is the President who to make political points against the NRA and those who defend the second amendment had his administration ship thousands of weapons to some of the most violent and best organized criminals on the planet, the Mexican drug cartels. He sought to blame the violence in Mexico on Americans' right to keep and bear arms. The result? At least two dead US agents and hundreds of dead Mexicans, including teenagers and children. Yes, children. Children with parents who grieve as much as the parents in Newtown do. The grieving American parents, however, know that the man responsible for their children's murders is dead; the grieving Mexican parents, on the other hand, know that the man responsible for their children's murders got re-elected to a second term as President of the United States--in large part thanks to the votes of Mexicans in the US. It seems that the lives of Mexicans only count when they emigrate to the US and vote Democrat.

Ann Coulter schools the gun grabbers and Mother Jones on how to stop school shootings.

But first, let's check that Mother Jones "study."

In a nonsense "study" going around the Internet right now, Mother Jones magazine claims to have produced its own study of all public shootings in the last 30 years and concludes: "In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun."

..,.

The magazine reaches its conclusion by simply excluding all cases where an armed civilian stopped the shooter: They looked only at public shootings where four or more people were killed, i.e., the ones where the shooter wasn't stopped.

So let's recount the times when armed civilians managed to end a shooting spree before mass murder occurred.

At the Portland shooting, for example, no explanation was given for the amazing fact that the assailant managed to kill only two people in the mall during the busy Christmas season.

It turns out, concealed-carry-holder Nick Meli hadn't noticed that the mall was a gun-free zone. He pointed his (otherwise legal) gun at the shooter as he paused to reload, and the next shot was the attempted mass murderer killing himself. (Meli aimed, but didn't shoot, because there were bystanders behind the shooter.) ...

-- Mayan Palace Theater, San Antonio, Texas, this week: Jesus Manuel Garcia shoots at a movie theater, a police car and bystanders from the nearby China Garden restaurant; as he enters the movie theater, guns blazing, an armed off-duty cop shoots Garcia four times, stopping the attack. Total dead: Zero.

-- Appalachian School of Law, 2002: Crazed immigrant shoots the dean and a professor, then begins shooting students; as he goes for more ammunition, two armed students point their guns at him, allowing a third to tackle him. Total dead: Three.

-- Santee, Calif., 2001: Student begins shooting his classmates -- as well as the "trained campus supervisor"; an off-duty cop who happened to be bringing his daughter to school that day points his gun at the shooter, holding him until more police arrive. Total dead: Two.

-- Pearl High School, Mississippi, 1997: After shooting several people at his high school, student heads for the junior high school; assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieves a .45 pistol from his car and points it at the gunman's head, ending the murder spree. Total dead: Two.

-- Edinboro, Pa., 1998: A student shoots up a junior high school dance being held at a restaurant; restaurant owner pulls out his shotgun and stops the gunman. Total dead: One.